68 Generation

A series of events located roughly on a timeline between 1956 and 1977 helped create a near-global phenomenon: the “68 generation.” Specifically, as a transnational social movement, the generation of ‘68 connects such diverse events as the Prague Spring, the Summer of Love in the United States, the Paris May, the international anti-Vietnam congress in Berlin, Zengakuren's attack on Tokyo, the Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico, and the protests of the Black Power movement in the United States after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. By challenging government policies and by questioning traditional or bourgeois lifestyles in East and West as well as South and North, the ‘68 generation was able to induce what Immanuel Wallerstein called a “revolution in the world-system.”

Karl Mannheim distinguishes three layers of generation building. First, the “location” of a generation is constituted by a shared sociohistorical context in which a certain age group grows up. Second, these cohorts become generations only when they develop a collective identity based on the common experience of rapid social change. Third, generations can split into different generation units, each responding to the experiences in a specific way.

The shared context founding the ‘68 generation can be characterized by at least three important trends that seemed similar in many countries: demographic changes, expansion of education, and economic growth.

By contrast, it is more difficult to establish the second layer: the creation of a self-conscious transnational generation in the context of these trends. Protests often had national foundations, for example, the confrontation with the suppressed fascist past in Germany. Nevertheless, these national developments were amalgamated into a transnational collective identity based on common cultural and political reference points by different social, especially student, movements. Salient cultural reference points included the (U.S.) youth and counterculture, especially the hippies, and rock music, resulting in lifestyles characterized by individualism and liberalization from traditional constraints. Political reference points included prominently the ideas of the New Left, crossing the ideological fronts of the Cold War, and the anti-imperialistic solidarity with liberation movements in developing countries, especially Vietnam. For example, on a single weekend in October 1967, demonstrations against this war were held in Washington, Paris, London, Berlin, Turin, Amsterdam, Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Aarhus, Tokyo, Toronto, and Montreal. These events and ideas became the transnational common nodal points of otherwise heterogeneous movements and perspectives, molding them into an “imagined community of global revolt” (Prince, 2006: 867).

International exchange and collaboration spread through at least three different channels: first, direct relational ties between the different national movements. Leading figures of the student movement like Tom Hayden (United States) or Rudi Dutschke (Germany) traveled around the world to talk with like-minded people, between them also idols like Che Guevara. Second, an exchange took place indirectly through nonrelational channels, mainly the media, especially television with its new emphasis on visual communication. People in many countries were touched by pictures of the Vietnam War. Third, shared ideas, ranging from the New Left to concepts of urban guerilla, often connected to popular theorists like Frantz Fanon, allowed a common interpretation of the situation and the development of similar strategies of action. A transnational network emerged, making the flow of information, theories, and protest forms like sit-ins possible.

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